Behind the VFX of 'Ted' Season 2: Character Animation and an AI Deepfake Bill Clinton

Visual effects supervisors Hoyt Yeatman and Blair Clark join the befores & afters podcast to break down the making of Ted season 2. They walk through the full pipeline for shooting scenes with the CG bear — including stuffy passes — and the character animation work delivered by Framestore, explaining how the team translated Seth MacFarlane's comedic performance into a believable digital character.

The episode also digs into one of the season's more technically ambitious sequences: a Bill Clinton appearance that initially went through makeup effects and traditional CG before both approaches fell short. The team ultimately turned to AI deepfake techniques to achieve a convincing likeness of MacFarlane-as-Clinton, marking a notable on-screen use of the technology in a major streaming production.